Iain Duncan Smith's special adviser Philippa Stroud, who 'is still getting paid by the thinktank he founded, the Centre for Social Justice, which is now seeking to influence him on policy issues'. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

When I worked for the Labour party I had a cordial disdain for thinktanks and their staff. While we humble servants of the party were out winning elections and helping MPs change the country (ahem), someone from an acronym or a misspelled Latin word was pontificating on TV about the best way to reform the relationship between citizen and state in the post-reality information age, or some such gubbins.

In reality, my political career was less about passing laws and more about organising phone banks. Yet I'd scarcely have a chance to take the mickey out of an earnest young economics graduate in their post-university suit before they'd written a pamphlet on the application of game theory to rail tendering and were a Newsnight veteran treated with more respect than any politician. In short order they'd become a special adviser to a minister and turn up to party events carrying a folder and an air of superiority. I'd still be trying to organise a phone bank.

The trail of policy advisers moving from thinktank to government and back again is common to all parties, and all recent governments. Most recently, we have learned that Iain Duncan Smith's special adviser Philippa Stroud is still getting paid by the thinktank he founded, the Centre for Social Justice, which is now seeking to influence him on policy issues. Previously, Tony Blair's former head of policy Matthew Taylor was director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, whose current head, Nick Pearce, did much the same job for Gordon Brown. At No 10, Pearce worked with Gavin Kelly, who is now director of Resolution Foundation. Today, advisers such as Sonia Sodha move between thinktank, leader's policy team and back.

Nick Clegg's former adviser Richard Reeves was a director of Demos, while Vince Cable is advised by Giles Wilkes, latterly of CentreForum. Thinktanks have provided David Cameron with a stream of advisers and MPs, ranging from Liz Truss, a former deputy director of Reform, now a junior minister for education and childcare; to Nick Boles, founder of Policy Exchange and now a minister for local government. The process works in reverse, too: Sean Worth moved from the No 10 policy unit to Policy Exchange earlier this year.

What's more, the CVs of thinktankers can read terrifyingly similarly:

"Young thinktanker <Insert name here> graduated from <a Russell Group> University, where they focused on <obscure area of public policy>. They are an opinion leader in their field, having appeared on <Newsnight/Channel 4 News/Today Programme/Delete as appropriate>, and are a regular columnist for <Comment is free/Telegraph blogs/Conservative Home/New Statesman>."

Worse, some thinktanks serve as little more than ego trips for narcissistic waffle and flimflam merchants, or a thin intellectual veneer for an inane political project. (Phillip Blond and ResPublica, I'm looking at you.)

Most depressingly, the quest for funding can be deeply uncomfortable. Ask any thinktanker, and they'll tell you it's hard to get funding for worthy explorations of welfare policy. The need to show policy puissance to attract sponsors might explain why the relationship between thinktanks, advisers and government can become overly close.

So, are thinktanks part of the problem in our politics, rather than the solution?

No.

Politics in government, at its heart, is a desperate search for deliverable solutions to real problems. Cash-strapped political parties and overwhelmed individual politicians find it hard to develop these proposals, especially in opposition. This can lead to governments arriving in office with little more than good intentions and a slogan.

The best thinktanks, and the best people in them, take the job of developing policy incredibly seriously. Some, such as the King's Fund or the Institute for Fiscal Studies, are respected across all parties for their knowledge of individual fields, and our political system and the accountability of government would be far weaker without them.

I've even come to believe that most thinktankers are modest, thoughtful, slightly worthy, do-gooders who want to contribute ideas that might possibly make things a little better for people. Boring, I know.

Annoyingly, some of them are even good at it, and the reason they transfer in and out of ministerial offices is because the ideas and proposals they offer can be really useful.

So, when faced with uncomfortable relationships such as that between Duncan Smith, his special adviser and his thinktank, the solution isn't to hate thinktanks, but to try to make them better and more inclusive.

We need more transparency of thinktank funding (Who Funds You? provides a helpful guide to how open thinktanks are right now).

We need more thinktanks to be based outside London, like IPPR North in Newcastle and Manchester, and to represent different viewpoints, as the union-funded thinktank Class is designed to do. We need thinktanks to be able to recruit more genuine experts, with real experience of their field, as RUSI and the King's Fund do, not just fresh-faced (and cheap) graduates.

The answer to the rise of the thinktankocracy is not a revolt against our horn-rimmed masters, but an expansion and an opening up of their territory. It turns out we need more products of Phrontisterions. Still, at least it'll keep Jeremy Paxman busy patronising them.

• Hopi Sen has never worked for a thinktank, or for a government department. He knows loads of people who have, though, and probably doesn't want to insult them too much, so that may be affecting his judgment a bit. Oh, and he's a member of the Progress strategy board, which some people say is a thinktank, and other people say is a collection of crazed Blairite zombies who are trying to subvert the British social-democratic tradition by publishing a magazine and holding speaker meetings. He writes in a personal capacity and often, in the third person.